Ever since 2006, I’ve attempted to read a few books a week, with the best periods being when I’ve been travelling on work when I average a book a day. Most weeks mean 3-4 books read.
This has meant a few things have changed in my reading habit
- I read faster now (well, duh!)
- The books are far less weighty. More genre fiction, less difficult reads, so overall a dumbing down of my diet.
- I have a long list of new authors in my to-read pile, but have been completely indiscriminating
- I’ve added more genres to my like list - hard sci-fi, extreme horror, slipstream, historicals
- I remember way less about what I’ve read than ever before
In a sense, I’ve become the book version of someone who binges on TV the old fashioned way - not picking your shows, but sucking in anything that’s on, every night, all night.
As part of my habit review, it’s obvious that this is a real shitty use of my time or indulging in my favourite pastime. For God’s sake, I haven’t finished Steve Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen yet as a result of spending all my time on cookie-cutter urban fantasies.
I’m not sure how to completely fix it, so I’ve decided to take a small step to begin with. Goodreads comes up with its best-of-year lists, so I spent December looking through all the genres, and adding the ones I wanted to read on my to-read list. I’ve been working my way through those since then, and plan to not read any other fiction until I’m done with the list.